Don’t Forget Haiti

November 2, 2012

Ready to fight back?

Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.

You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue.

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

Support Progressive Journalism

The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.

Fight Back!

Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.

You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue.

Travel With The Nation

Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.

Sign up for our Wine Club today.

Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?

On Tuesday, I posted some suggestions for how people could help the victims of Hurricane Sandy here in the United States. I neglected to mention the horrific suffering in impoverished Haiti, which was pummeled by Sandy’s devastating trajectory before she hit US shores.

Three days of fierce rain and wind flooded about 100 camps where some 325,000 people, still homeless from the 2010 earthquake, continue to live. Tents and other makeshift shelters were inundated by water, poorly maintained latrines overflowed, stored food was ruined and garbage and waste were strewn everywhere.

The storm also ravaged the Haitian countryside, massively destroying crops, which will likely send food prices skyrocketing, making it even more difficult for Haitians who are already struggling to feed their families. Jean Debalio Jean-Jacques, Head of the Department of Agriculture, estimates that Sandy destroyed 70 percent of crops in southern Haiti and caused significant livestock losses. Johan Peleman, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ in Haiti, said that “there are approximately 1.2 million people who are facing food insecurity in the country.”

As the massive relief and recovery effort forges ahead in the US, the stalwart NGO the International Rescue Committee is acting fast in Haiti, where hundreds of thousands of people still living in tent camps are in desperate need of help.

The IRC has been on the ground doing critical work in Haiti since the devastating January, 2010 earthquake destroyed huge swaths of the country. In the last few days, with limited resources, the organization has provided emergency kits with shelter materials and hygiene items to 4,200 victims of the storm and distributions continue apace.